Joanna Godden Part 54

She had told the cabman to drive to Charing Cross station, as she felt unequal to the complications of travelling from Lewisham. It was a long drive, and all the way Joanna sat and cried. She seemed to have cried a great deal lately--her nature had melted in a strange way, and the tears she had so seldom shed as a girl were now continually ready to fall--but she had never cried as much as she cried this morning. By the time she reached Charing Cross she was in desperate need of that powder-puff Bertie had urged her to possess.

So this was the end--the end of the great romance which should have given her girlhood back to her, but which instead seemed to have shut her into a lonely and regretful middle-age. All her shining pride in herself was gone--she saw herself as one who has irrevocably lost all that makes life worth living ... pride and love. She knew that Bertie did not love her--in his heart he was glad that she was going--all he was sorry for was the manner of it, which might bring him disgrace. But he would soon get over that, and then he would be thankful he was free, and eventually he would marry some younger woman than herself ... and she? Yes, she still loved him--but it would not be for long. She could feel her love for him slowly dying in her heart. It was scarcely more than pity now--pity for the little singing clerk whom she had caught and would have put in a cage if he had not fluttered so terribly in her hands.

When she arrived at Charing Cross a feeling of desolation was upon her.

A porter came to fetch her box, but Joanna--the great Joanna G.o.dden, who put terror into the markets of three towns--shrank back into the taxi, loath to leave its comfortable shelter for the effort and racket of the station. A dark, handsome, rather elderly man, was coming out of one of the archways. Their eyes met and he at once turned his away, but Joanna leapt for him--

"Sir Harry! Sir Harry Trevor! Don't you know me?"

Only too well, but he had not exactly expected her to claim acquaintance. He felt bewildered when Joanna pushed her way to him through the crowd and wrung his hand as if he was her only friend.

"Oh, Sir Harry, reckon I'm glad to see you!"

"I--I--" stuttered the baronet.

He looked rather flushed and sodden, and the dyeing of his hair was more obvious than it had been.

"Fancy meeting you!" gasped Joanna.

"Er--how are you, Miss G.o.dden?"

"Do you know when there's a train to Rye?"

"I'm sorry, I don't. I've just been saying good-bye to my son Lawrence--he's off to Africa or somewhere, but I couldn't wait till his train came in. I've got to go over to St. Pancras and catch the 10.50 for the north."

"Lawrence!"

Thank goodness, that had put her on another scent--now she would let him go.

"Yes--he's in the station. You'll see him if you're quick."

Joanna turned away, and he saw that the tears were running down her face. The woman had been drinking, that accounted for it all ... well, he wished Lawrence joy of her. It would do him good to have a drunken woman falling on his neck on a public platform.

The porter said there was not a train for Rye for another hour. He suggested that Joanna should put her luggage in the cloak-room and go and get herself a cup of tea--the porter knew the difference between a drunken woman and one who is merely faint from trouble and want of her breakfast. But Joanna's mind was somehow obsessed by the thought of Lawrence--her brother-in-law as she still called him in her heart--she wanted to see him--she remembered his kindness long ago ... and in her sorrow she was going back to the sorrow of those days ... somehow she felt as if Martin had just died, as if she had just come out of North Farthing House, alone, as she had come then--and now Lawrence was here, as he had been then, to kiss her and say "Dear Jo"....

"What platform does the train for Africa start from?" she asked the porter.

"Well, lady, I can't rightly say. The only boat-train from here this morning goes to Folkestone, and that's off--but most likely the gentleman ud be going from Waterloo, and the trains for Waterloo start from number seven."

The porter took her to number seven, and at the barrier she caught sight of a familiar figure sitting on a bench. Father Lawrence's bullet head showed above the folds of his cloak; by his side was a big shapeless bundle and his eyes were fixed on the station roof. He started violently when a large woman suddenly sat down beside him and burst into tears.

"Lawrence!" sobbed Joanna--"Lawrence!"

"Joanna!"

He was too startled to say anything more, but the moment did not admit of much conversation. Joanna sat beside him, bent over her knees, her big shoulders shaking with sobs which were not always silent. Lawrence made himself as large as he could, but he could not hide her from the public stare, for nature had not made her inconspicuous, and her taste in clothes would have defeated nature if it had. Her orange toque had fallen sideways on her tawny hair--she was like a big, broken sunflower.

"My dear Jo," he said gently, after a time--"let me go and get you a drink of water."

"No--don't leave me."

"Then let me ask someone to go."

"No--no.... Oh, I'm all right--it's only that I felt so glad at seeing you again."

Lawrence was surprised.

"It makes me think of that other time when you were kind--I remember when Martin died ... oh, I can't help wishing sometimes he was dead--that he'd died right at the start--or I had."

"My dear ..."

"Oh, when Martin died, at least it was finished; but this time it ain't finished--it's like something broken." She clasped her hands, in their brown kid gloves, against her heart.

"Won't you tell me what's happened? This isn't Martin you're talking about?"

"No. But I thought he was like Martin--that's what made me take to him at the start. I looked up and I saw him, and I said to myself 'That's Martin'--it gave me quite a jump."

The Waterloo train was in the station and the people on the platform surged towards it, leaving Lawrence and Joanna stranded on their seat.

Lawrence looked at the train for a minute, then shook his head, as if in answer to some question he had asked himself.

"Look here, Jo," he said, "won't you tell me what's happened? I can't quite understand you as it is. Don't tell me anything you'd rather not."

Joanna sat upright and swallowed violently.

"It's like this," she said. "I've just broken off my engagement to marry--maybe you didn't know I was engaged to be married?"

"No, I didn't."

"Well, I was. I was engaged to a young chap--a young chap in an office.

I met him at Marlingate, when I was staying there that time. I thought he was like Martin--that's what made me take to him at the first. But he wasn't like Martin--not really in his looks and never in his ways. And at last it got more'n I could bear, and I broke with him this morning and came away--and I reckon he ain't sorry, neither.... I'm thirteen year older than him."

Her tears began to flow again, but the platform was temporarily deserted. Lawrence waited for her to go on--he suspected a tragedy which had not yet been revealed.

"Oh, my heart's broke," she continued--"reckon I'm done for, and there's nothing left for me."

"But, Jo--is this--this affair quite finished? Perhaps ... I mean to say, quarrels can be made up, you know."

"Not this one," said Joanna. "It's been too much. For days I've watched him getting tired of me, and last night he turned on me because for his sake I'd done what no woman should do."

The words were no sooner out of her mouth than she was dismayed. She had not meant to say them. Would Lawrence understand? What would he think of her?--a clergyman.... She turned on him a face crimson and suffused with tears, to meet a gaze as serene as ever. Then suddenly a new feeling came to her--something apart from horror at herself and shame at his knowing, and yet linked strangely with them both--something which was tenderer than any shame and yet more ruthless.... Her last guard broke down.

"Lawrence, I've been wicked, I've been bad--I'm sorry--Lawrence."...

"Tell me as little or as much as you like, dear Jo."

Joanna gripped his arm; she had driven him into the corner of the seat, where he sat with his bundle on his lap, his ear bent to her mouth, while she crowded up against him, pouring out her tale. Every now and then he said gently--"Sh-sh-sh"--when he thought that her confession was penetrating the further recesses of Charing Cross....

"Oh, Lawrence, I feel so bad--I feel so wicked--I never should have thought it of myself. I didn't feel wicked at first, but I did afterwards. Oh, Lawrence, tell me what I'm to do."

His professional instinct taught him to treat the situation with simplicity, but he guessed that Joanna would not appreciate the quiet dealings of the confessional. He had always liked Joanna, always admired her, and he liked and admired her no less now, but he really knew very little of her--her life had crossed his only on three different brief occasions, when she was engaged to his brother, when she was anxious to appoint a Rector to the living in her gift, and now when as a broken-hearted woman she relieved herself of a burden of sorrow.